The strong growth in demand for portable consumer electronics is driving the need for high-capacity storage devices. Non-volatile semiconductor memory devices, such as flash memory storage cards, are widely used to meet the ever-growing demands on digital information storage and exchange. Their portability, versatility and rugged design, along with their high reliability and large storage capacity, have made such memory devices ideal for use in a wide variety of electronic devices, including for example computers, digital cameras, digital music players, video game consoles, PDAs and cellular telephones.
Equally ubiquitous is the universal serial bus (USB) interface for transferring data and information between devices such as those named above. A typical USB storage device includes a memory portion coupled to a USB connector capable of mating within a USB slot of a host device. The memory portion typically includes a printed circuit board on which are mounted one or more flash memory chips, a controller, passive components and possibly an LED for indicating when the memory is being accessed. While there are several types of USB connectors, there is a recent trend toward the type-C USB device, including power and data lines with a reversible connector.
During a conventional fabrication process, the memory portion and the USB connector are formed separately, and then affixed to each other, as by welding and/or soldering. Thereafter, the memory portion may be covered by the shield. This type of device has a relatively large footprint, which can be problematic for example when protruding from the USB slot of a host device such as a computer. The protruding USB device can catch, and come out or otherwise break, when the host device is stored or transported. Additionally, the separate memory portion and large footprint make it difficult to conduct heat away from heat-producing elements of the memory portion, thereby adversely affecting the speed and operation of the memory portion.